Globalization and Culture Prof. Anjali Gera Roy Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur Lecture - 27 Yoga, Meditation, Gurus Hello, in the last unit we looked at how the western scholars along with artists, painters, writers, philosophers constructed the discourse about the east, which they call the orient and this discourse which went under the name of orientalism created an image of India and the east in the minds of the west, which was a construction of the west and was used by the west to define itself. In this unit, we look at the later phase, the 20th century phase when there was an extraordinary interest in India. This India which was constructed as a mystical spiritual entity became the object of the west desire in various ways and we begin with the indologists. After having explained how this interest began with the indologists, let us look at the various waves of the western interest in India, which converged on Indian spirituality, Meditation and Yoga beginning in the 1920s. So, we look at Yoga, Meditation and the Gurus, and how the myth of Indian spirituality and India as a mystical spiritual nation was fed into the western imaginary through the popularity and the cult following that many of the Gurus enjoyed beginning in the1920s which also began a cult for Yoga. (Refer Slide Time: 02:14)
So, we begin in 1920s with Paramhamsa Yogananda. In 1920, Paramhamsa Yogananda came to address a conference of religious liberals in Boston. He d been sent by his Guru, the ageless Babaji, to spread the message of Kriya Yoga to the west. I am not going into the earlier visits of the spiritual leaders such as Swami Vivekananda and others prior to this, because this cult began in the 20th century and the cult for Gurus and Meditation and Yoga where a number of genuine and fake Gurus became the object of the west interest. All though his early works had uncompromising titles like recharging your business battery out of the cosmos, his 1946 autobiography of a yogi self realization fellowship remains a spiritual classic. (Refer Slide Time: 03:21) And in 1920 it was a western woman, Indra Devi who opened a Yoga studio in Hollywood and her 3 popular books had house wives from New Jersey to Texas standing on their heads in their bed rooms. So, she was the one who created this cult for Yoga. She was the first westerner to study with Sri Krishnamacharya and the first to bring his lineage to the west. He went on to become the grandfather of American Yoga, his students included B.K.S Iyengar, Pattabhi Jois and T.K.V Desikachar.
(Refer Slide Time: 04:04) I am going to focus on yoga and meditation and interest in the Gurus particularly on yoga to show how this interest in India focused on the practice of yoga and the following of Gurus, a cult followings which used yoga as a practice to reach a higher state of being. The person who introduced more yoga to America than any other was Richard Hittleman who in 1950 returned from studies in India to teach Yoga in New York. Now Hittleman not only sold millions of copies of his books and pioneered yoga on television in 1961, but he influenced how yoga has been taught ever since. In 50s we also have the emergence of Ramana Maharshi because Hittlemans being the disciple of Ramana Maharshi, we have an interest rising in Ramana Maharshi, who was very much a spiritual yogi, and Hittleman is the first person to have disengaged yoga, which is part of Indian spiritual practices and not a sport or an exercise. Hittleman was the first person to have disengaged the spiritual practice from the physical aspect in yoga and yogic asanas and yogic practices.
(Refer Slide Time: 05:04) (Refer Slide Time: 05:19) So, he was the one who presented a non religious yoga for the American main stream with an emphasis on its physical benefits and these two streams have become separated ever since and today a number of people in the west are diehard fans of yoga as an exercise, as a physical activity having disassociated it from its spiritual aspects. He hoped students would then be motivated to learn Yoga, Philosophy and Meditation.
(Refer Slide Time: 06:37) In 1958 Indian born Swami Vishnu Devananda, a disciple of Swami Sivananda Saraswati arrived in San Francisco sponsored by the artist Peter Max. His 1960 book, the complete illustrated book of Yoga became an essential guidebook for many practitioners. Dubbed by a colleague as a man with a bush he founded the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta centers head quartered in Montreal, one of the largest networks of Yoga schools in the west. So, we can see how Yoga and Meditation spread to all parts of the west not just in North America, US as well as Canada and in the 60s, a we find Swami Satchidananda another one of Swami Sivananda s disciples arriving in New York for a couple of days and ended up staying there permanently.
(Refer Slide Time: 07:27) His integral Yoga institute now includes an Ashram in rural Virginia and over 40 branches worldwide. Satchidananda opened the Wood stock festival in 1969, evoking Vivekananda s greeting of 75 years earlier My beloved sisters and brothers. Looking like an aging hippie himself with flowing hair and beard he provided a living example of a life dedicated to spirit. It was just what many young people were hungering for and now from the 20s we come to the 60s wave, when there is a crescendo and with the arrival of Ram Dass another pied piper for American youth. The former Harvard professor left on a pilgrimage to India in the late 60s as Richard Alpert he returned with a guru and a new identity.
(Refer Slide Time: 08:27) Now, his 1970 tour of college campuses and his book Be Here Now established the spiritual quest as a life style for a new generation of seekers. So, we talking about the 60s wave and the western turn to eastern mysticism and spirituality as a panacea for all western evils. (Refer Slide Time: 09:08) In 66, B.K.S Iyengars Light on Yoga was published in the United States, a book that is still considered to be the Bible of serious Asana practice. In 1973 Mr.Iyenger was invited
to an Arbor Michigan to teach by Mary Palmer. Nearly every western teacher has been influenced by his emphasis on anatomical precision, many without even knowing it. (Refer Slide Time: 09:42) And by the 70s you would find Yoga and spiritual teachings everywhere near Santacruz, California and the silent sage Baba Haridas founded Mount Madonna to provide residential Yoga programs. In 1975, Pattabhi Jois made his first visit to the United States and set off the wild fire of Ashtanga Vinayasa Yoga. Around the same time T.K.V Desikachar, son of the great master Sri Krishnamacharya, brought his Viniyoga to the west. So, we have a mushrooming of various Yoga institutes and Gurus, Yoga practitioners who are lapped up by a west waiting for a messiah to solve their spiritual problems.
(Refer Slide Time: 10:40) And then we come to Maharshi Mahesh yogi who has been the most influential guru in the 60s and who is responsible for the explosion of Meditation and Yoga across America in the early 60s when an unassuming looking Yogi came out of the Himalayas to spiritually regenerate the world. (Refer Slide Time: 11:04) Now, his historic meeting with the Beatles is what set off the trend or the fad for a Hinduism amongst the western youth. Largely owing to the popularity of Beatles in the
60s, a large number of youth turned to Hinduism and Hindu spirituality, Indian spirituality in order to get away from the problems of the western world. Once dismissed as hippie mysticism, the Hindu practice of mind control that Maharshi taught, gradually gained medical respectability. Maharshi Mahesh Yogi began teaching transcendental Meditation in 1955 and brought the technique to the United States in 1959. But the movement really took off after the Beatles visited his ashram in India in 1968. So, we have here Beatles sitting at the Maharshi s feet and we have the picture of film stars Mia Farrow as well. (Refer Slide Time: 12:12) Once there, the rock stars had a falling out with the Maharshi after rumors emerged that he was making inappropriate advances on attendee Mia farrow. John Lennon was so angry that he wrote a bitter satire Sexy Sadie in which he wowed that the Maharshi would get yours yet.
(Refer Slide Time: 12:32) So, the Maharshi insisted he had done nothing wrong and years later Paul McCartney agreed with him. Deepak Chopra, a new age Guru as you know him, a disciple of the Maharshi and a friend of George Harrisons has disputed the Farrow story saying that the Maharshi had become unhappy with the Beatles because they were using drugs. (Refer Slide Time: 12:56) With the help of celebrity endorsements, the Maharshi, which is a hindi language title for the great seer, parlayed his interpretations of ancient scripture into a multimillion global empire. So, we can see here that this cult for the east which is created in the west first by
indologists and orientalists and this forms of new orientalism circulate in the western world within the east itself not only the nationalist leaders, but also the purveyors of eastern mysticism and philosophy themselves, pandering to this taste for east in the west, and appropriating this desire of the west which led to capitalizing on this west s interest to create multimillion dollar global empire. (Refer Slide Time: 14:00) Transcendental Meditation after 50 years of teaching, the Maharshi turned to larger themes with grand designs to harness the power of group Meditation to create world peace and to mobilize his devotees to banish poverty from the earth. Maharshi Mahesh Yogi s transcendental Meditation empire now claims 40,000 teachers and more than 4 million practitioners with 1200 centers in 108 countries.
(Refer Slide Time: 14:32) So, now we come to 60s counter culture and this counter culture in creating a taste, a fashion for the east in the west, a fad for the east which is carried over today in the era of globalization. In some ways the spirit of 60s counter culture has made a resurgence today, we have arguably returned to a time when many are questioning the values, this is what somebody says, the value of our relentless pursuit of success, asking whether our hard-driving life styles are causing us to miss out on some of the most important things in life. (Refer Slide Time: 15:18)
And the interest in Yoga, Meditation and eastern spirituality, which were all originally popularized in the west during the 60s have also peaked in recent years becoming ingrained in western cultural lexicon and American life styles. (Refer Slide Time: 15:38) So, a key strategy in creating global religious practices is to decontextualize them from their religious contexts and world views and it has been a noted feature of Asian religions to create universal and decontextualized global practices. Yoga techniques and various kinds of meditation have become entangled in multiple fields that are related to secular, religious, spiritual, health and well being.
(Refer Slide Time: 16:10) And through aligning with a proliferation of modern discourses, decontextualized religious practices create opportunities for global participation and makes claims towards modernity. The decontextualization and subsequent process of recontextualization enters new discursive fields creating new relationships and dialogues. These practices are now disembedded from their frame work and made a new seemingly independent and able to be inserted into a diversity of traditional and modern settings. These processes demonstrate the particular ways that Asian religions in dialogue with global discourses reinterpret and translate themselves into non Asian cultures. So to summarize what I have said, I focused on Yoga to show how interest in India and Indian religious practices and spirituality including Yoga and Meditation and Hinduism itself has been prevalent since the turn of the century in the west, since the 20s and there have been subsequent waves once in the 20s, then in the 60s and now in the 90s and these waves show how Indian spiritual or Asian spiritual practices are now disengaged from the original context, they are decontextualized from their original context where Yoga and Meditation was a part of Hindu mystical practices and the objective of these practices was to attain higher understanding. Now, these practices are being used increasingly in the west, decoupled from the originary context and therefore deterritorialized. They are being used as stress busters, as forms of physical activity, as aid for improving concentration and again finally, as also an
answer to the problems of the west. So, once again, as in the past, the orient converging on Yoga, Meditation and Gurus with the complicity of the Gurus who did not hesitate to capitalize on this fad for India in the west. The west, not just North America, but also Europe has again created this mystical orient to answer its own needs.